Saving children from unfit parents will require a different kind of march: Phillip Morris

The Father’s Day march comes too late to save two-year-old Derrice Alexander Jr. The Cleveland toddler was shot and killed Tuesday morning.

But still the march will go on.

It must.

Marching is what angry, frustrated, solution-bereft people frequently do: They rally in open spaces and vent. An untold number of men, mostly African-Americans, are expected to march to Cleveland City Hall Saturday morning in a show of support for responsible fatherhood.

Once assembled at 601 Lakeside Avenue, the marchers are expected to publicly commit to a pledge to end community and family violence.

“I pledge to stand with courage, lead with conviction, and speak out to promote non-violence as the norm,” is a plank in the pledge to which the marchers will commit. The rally is well-timed to coincide with the pageantry of Father’s Day weekend.

It is also a march in the wrong direction.

City Hall is an isolated political island. It is a place where policy is made, development is spurred and favors exchanged. That’s its purpose.

City Hall is not a place that has a good track record for dealing with families or family reunification. The de facto infanticide that occurs when fathers routinely go missing leaves a horrible scar on Greater Cleveland children.

Any marching and pledging would be of far more significance if it were focused in places like Lakeview Terrace, the crime-ridden public housing unit where Derrice was killed.

Lakeview, a toxic urban cauldron just west of downtown crammed into a bend on the Cuyahoga River, is a dangerous place where boys and men desperately need to see healthy examples of functional relationships between fathers and sons. It’s the place where Derrice died around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday after police say his father, Derrice Alexander Sr., 23, shot wildly into an apartment after a violent fight with his girlfriend.

Cleveland Councilman Zack Reed, who is spearheading the Father’s Day pledge and march that is being replicated in several cities across the country, said the rally is designed to create and sustain anti-violence traction.

“This pledge is about more than one day. It’s about forming the private and public partnerships that help us attack issues like teen pregnancy. But it’s also about addressing the reality that not enough of our young, black men have access to jobs,” he said.

That verbiage is as maddening as it is antiquated. Everything Reed said is absolutely true. Everything he said has also been true since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Kerner Commission concluded in 1968 that the riots of the 60’s had everything to do with a lack of economic opportunity and the disintegration of the black family.

Almost 50 years later we are still combating the same ills, fighting the same pathologies, and using the same tired tactics. Fifty years later, we are still marching and marching on the wrong targets.

“Violence is a public health issue. That is precisely why we’re putting together a diverse coalition of community groups to confront this issue and its deep roots,” Reed continued.

Fine.

Try this on for a root.

A suburban middle-school commencement ceremony earlier this week played the instrumental soundtrack from a song called “Loyal,” by rapper Lil Wayne and Chris Brown, a noted domestic abuser. The song was listed at number Nine on the Billboard Hot 100 hot songs recently. The hook to the song is simple:

“These hoes ain’t loyal.”

Why this song was played at a graduation ceremony involving adolescents is beyond my wildest comprehension. It’s a far cry from "Pomp and Circumstance" and speaks directly to the depth of the misogyny, violence, and disintegrated family unit we face.

“I pledge to challenge men, who use sexist language and make degrading jokes or comments about women,” is another plank in the pledge that Saturday’s City Hall marchers will make.

That’s fine as far as it goes. But what good does it do reciting this noble pledge from the steps of City Hall?

The battle for the hearts and minds of young boys and fathers must be waged directly in homes and in schools. That must be the first order of business. Employment opportunities remain central to all of these concerns. But a criminally unfit father is also an unfit employee. There’s no getting around that.

The de facto infanticide and parental abandonment that destroys so many African-American communities will only be diminished when we slow the crush of young people unfit for parenthood from having babies.

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